1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the field of storing and dispensing materials, with particular application to containers with contents that are partially consumed and particular application to carbonated beverages.
2. Discussions of Prior Art
Containers, when partially emptied of their contents, exhibit a wide range of undesirable characteristics. Unless special and often expensive procedures are used, atmosphere enters the container and pollutes it with undesirable elements such as water vapor, air born contaminates, or unwanted oxygen. Another undesirable characteristic of a partially emptied container is the tendency for the usable material in the container to loose gas, off gassing to the air space left in the container. Off gassing results in premature curing or damaging of products. It results in loss of material. One particularly poignant example of off gassing damage is that which occurs to partially consumed portions of effervescent beverages. Effervescent beverages such as soda, champagne, sparkling wines, coolers, beer and the like, have CO2 gas dissolved in them, at pressure. Unfortunately the carbonated beverage is stored under pressure in the bottle and after the bottle is opened, the best part of the gas is free is escape the beverage, and the drink goes flat. Even if the cap is replaced, the gas is free to go into the air above the drink, and the bigger that space gets as the drink is “used up”, the more gas can escape and the poorer the drink tastes. A second opening of the container compounds the problem and accelerates the damage to the beverage. Leaving a very small amount of beverage at the bottom of the container, will yield in a day, a drink that is almost devoid of effervescence and foremost people, worthless.
Preserving the unused portion of effervescent beverages has also over time proved to be a difficult problem to address economically. Pumps have been developed which will repressurize opened bottles of effervescent material as exemplified by the device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,322,094 granted to Janesko, 1994. These cumbersome to use as each time the container is opened, the entire container must be repressurized. In addition, CO2, the gas used for carbonating drinks will transfer, in part, to the air pumped into the container, as the air has too low a partial pressure of CO2 as it is pumped from the atmosphere into the container. The beverage still goes flat despite all the pumping.
The concept of filling a container with alternate material to keep it full and preserve the contents has been embodied in previous patents. Hohl, U.S. Pat. No. 262,773, granted in 1882, shows an apparatus for insertion into a beer keg, the apparatus having a bladder attached that is filled with water from a reservoir mounted above the keg. The reservoir is utilized to fill the bladder with water as beer is removed from the keg via a tap mounted in the keg. A pipe is fitted between the reservoir and the keg. Water flows down a pipe from the reservoir and fills the bladder. A similar device is described by Kish, U.S. Pat. No. 2,762,534, granted in 1956. Fluid is forced into a pipe which runs into the keg and into a bladder, that pressure causing beer to flow out another pipe with connection to the inside of the beer keg. Valves are used to regulate that pressure flow. This prior art has not seen wide spread utilization because it is expensive to purchase and extremely cumbersome to use especially in the home environment.
An advancement was seen when it was figured out the a conventional PET container could be used as the “bladder”. Feldman in U.S. Pat. No. 5,240,144, 1993 describes deforming a conventional PET bottle in a pressurized chamber for the purpose of preservation and dispensation. Using the bottle as the displacement partition is a huge advantage. The beverage is already sold in it, so another bladder does not have to be inserted into the bottle. This reduces contamination threats. It is faster and easier to buy the beverage already in the displacement partition without having to add the partition latter. The described device has some drawbacks. It is relatively complicated, cumbersome and expensive to produce. It requires a refrigeration unit, to keep the beverage cool. It has no means described to prevent the violent delivery of the beverage that would destroy the carbonation. The pressure chamber has thick walls in it's description, and would present safety hazards for some people, such as children to operate. It is not easily transportable, the way a conventional PET bottle of soda is.
Volumetric Displacement devices are more fully described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,220,311, granted in 2001, to author Litto, entitled “Preservation and Dispensation by Volumetric Displacement”. Litto introduces the terminology and concepts in U.S. Pat. No. 6,200,311 that are used in this current document. The reader may refer to U.S. Pat. No. 6,200,311 for information concerning the theory of operation and other aspects of Volumetric displacement device's
The various apparatus described by the various inventors above does not, however, contain the advancements that the current work described in this patent embodies. The previously described devices are large, cumbersome, complicated, unsafe, expensive to produce, heavy, hard to use, difficult to design, difficult to manufacture, of poor material, or work poorly in one way or another in relation to the advances described herein.
Current human pumps to pressurize bottles, such as the unit made by Jakari, a finger pump fitting on the top of the container, and pushing compressed air into it, do not protect the soda. The CO2 gas permeates the compressed air, and the soda goes flat.
Many so called soda savers, do not work effectively. They allow much of the CO2 gas to escape.
Many current soda savers need pickup tubes that deliver the soda from the bottom of the container to the top, so as to avoid any CO2 gas that has come out of the soda.
Previous volumetric displacement devices were difficult to operate and non-intuitive. There many controls were difficult for some people to master. You can not see into the old devices, thus you can not easily tell what is in them. This presents a safety hazard in that if the device contains material that the user is allergic to, or should not consume for health reasons, such as sugar to a diabetic, phenylalanine to a Phenylketonuric, the user can not read the label, nor tell if someone else has changed the contents of the volumetric displacement device. The United States government feels that it is so important for a consumer to be able to read the contents, nutritional information and other information concerning consumables that it makes it a law to put this information on the container. Yet this information is concealed in all previous volumetric displacement devices. The user can not easily tell how much of the contained material has been used so as to plan more purchases. The user can not see if the material has off gassed CO2 which gives clues to the operation needs of the device.